Him now the ghost seeks, his heart burning like a
coal with the sense of unendurable wrong. He is seeking the one drop
that can fall cooling on that heart--the sympathy, the answering rage
and grief of his boy. But when at length he finds him, the generous,
loving father has to see that son tremble like an aspen-leaf in his
doubtful presence. He has exposed himself to the shame of eyes and the
indignities of dullness, that he may pour the pent torrent of his wrongs
into his ears, but his disfranchisement from the flesh tells against him
even with his son: the young Hamlet is doubtful of the identity of the
apparition with his father. After all the burning words of the phantom,
the spirit he has seen may yet be a devil; the devil has power to assume
a pleasing shape, and is perhaps taking advantage of his melancholy to
damn him.
Armed in the complete steel of a suit well known to the eyes of the
sentinels, visionary none the less, with useless truncheon in hand,
resuming the memory of old martial habits, but with quiet countenance,
more in sorrow than in anger, troubled--not now with the thought of the
hell-day to which he must sleepless return, but with that unceasing ache
at the heart, which ever, as often as he is released into the cooling
air of the upper world, draws him back to the region of his
wrongs--where having fallen asleep in his orchard, in sacred security
and old custom, suddenly, by cruel assault, he was flung into Hades,
where horror upon horror awaited him--worst horror of all, the knowledge
of his wife!--armed he comes, in shadowy armour but how real sorrow!
Still it is not pity he seeks from his son: he needs it not--he can
endure.
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